


In Theory

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [35]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Magic Made Them Do It, Magical Artifacts, Mutual Pining, Very Silly Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 20:17:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14776562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: They know it’s bad when Bucky won’t stop laughing.





	In Theory

**Author's Note:**

> So this went from a 600-word seed to 3000 words of silly porn in less than a day. Bless you, readers.

They know it’s bad when Bucky won’t stop laughing.

It’s not like the guy never laughs, because he does, but it’s usually more of a chuckle, a kind of crinkle at the eyes that barely touches his lips. But this? This is a full-on, bent over, clutching-his sides-and-howling kind of thing and it is, it is--something else entirely.

“Rogers,” Tony says after the first ten minutes, after Bucky’s face starts geranium, “what the hell is wrong with your boyfriend?”

Steve tears his eyes away from le mess du Barnes long enough to cut Tony a glare. “Can we not with that right now, please? This is serious.”

“Serious how? He’s like the antonym of serious. He’s like two steps from turning into a cartoon.”

That gets Cap’s full attention. “You know, Tony, when I said I needed your help, it sure as shit wasn’t to provide a running commentary,” he says, all fire and no-longer-ice. “If you’re just gonna stand there and crack jokes, then maybe you should just leave, huh? I knew I should’ve called Nat.”

Tony clutches his heart, goggles to hide the real sting. “Nat? Come on. She’d just come up here and rag on you both for being idiots; though, to be fair, Barnes is the real numbnuts. Didn’t they teach you guys not to pick up weird mystic-looking things during the war? I bet you ran across all kinds of Scooby Doo shit over there, didn’t you? And yet I don’t remember reading about any of the Commandos being dumb enough to fondle some random artifact and end with an acute case of the giggles.”

“I hate you so much right now,” Steve says.

“Hey,” Tony says, “I’m not the one who rifled through Dr. Doom’s medicine cabinet. I mean, I get being a curious houseguest but an evil superbeing’s super evil lab is not the place I’d recommend giving into that impulse, you know?”

Rogers looks like he might actually hit him. “He was sweeping the place for explosives, Tony!”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Sure. But does that look like an explosive to you?”

It’s lying next to Barnes on the floor, the thing that Barnes smuggled out of Doom’s lair: a figure that looks like it’s carved out of driftwood, if driftwood were made of pink, glowing steel. It has horns (creepy) and a big grin (creepier) and an otherwise undeterminable shape and the one thing he and Steve agree on is that neither of them is going anywhere near it.

“You didn’t touch it, right? Didn’t try and wrestle it away from your sweet baboo once he started to crack?”

“No,” Steve says with a shudder, “god no. It’s--”

And then Bucky stops laughing.

The sound, it’s cut off like a switch; one second, Steve’s living room is filled with it, and in the next, dead silence. It’s upsetting.

“Buck?” Steve says, edging closer. “Bucky, hey, buddy. You ok?”

Barnes is on his side, his face towards the windows, and there’s this awful fucking moment when Tony can’t tell if he’s breathing.

Steve’s voice has a serious tremor. “Buck?” He falls to his haunches and reached out, one hand suspended. Whispers something that Tony can’t hear but whatever it is, it’s the right thing, because Barnes turns, flips up on his feet, and tugs Rogers up with him.

“Hiya, babe,” Bucky says with this big fuck-off grin, one he promptly plasters to Cap’s startled lips. 

In theory, this shouldn’t be shocking; Tony’s been making boyfriend jokes about the two of them for months now. They’re so stupidly close, the two of them, the team’s two grandpas, always practically joined at the arthritic hip. And there’s the way that Barnes looks at Steve when Steve’s focus is elsewhere: when he’s laying out their next mission or chiding Barton for not taking out the garbage or poking Nat in the ribs about something until she finally breaks down and smiles. The man looks at Rogers as if he’d like to eat him alive and it’s not that Tony’s unsympathetic to said impetus, it’s more like he doesn’t really need to know what it looks like, that kind of bare naked thirst. Feeling it’s bad enough, ok?

But he never actually believed that they’d done anything, that Cap and his Russian nesting doll were really, uh, nesting, in the most perverse and fantastic sense of the word. So yeah, this, seeing Barnes lay one on Steve like he has every right to, like it’s kind of their thing, like this is what actually happens when Steve beats everybody at _Risk_ for the 78th time and traipses up to his place triumphant with Bucky silent at his heels--it’s kind of a lot.

Especially since Captain Boy Scout doesn’t look like he objects in the slightest.

Pretty much the exact opposite.

He’s turned pink, for one thing; not fire engine like Barnes but blushy for sure, color that curls over his cheeks and spills down his neck, pretty. He’s always so fucking pretty, Rogers, but maybe never more so than now. Bucky has latched crab onto his shirt, one of the clean but worn white things he wears under his uniform jacket and Steve’s hands have drifted, like leaves in an updraft, and settled themselves in Bucky’s hair and he’s holding on so hard that his knuckles are white and it’s upsettingly hot, just watching the two of them kiss--like they can’t help themselves, like the only way they can breathe is mouth to mouth and it upends something in Tony, the fever there, the sounds of their lips meeting, parting, finding each other again.

“I, uh,” he says about two minutes after he should have, “ok. You know what? I’m gonna go.”

One of them--both?--groans in sexed-up stereo and then Steve pulls away, tips his mouth free enough to say: “Don’t.”

“What?”

Bucky gets a hold of Rogers’ tongue again and it’s a good 30 or so before Steve can respond. “You heard me,” he gets out, Bucky panting against his throat, “don’t you dare leave.” His eyes grab Tony’s, blue fucking fathoms. “Tony. Get over here.”

He should leave. Tony knows that. He should be way already gone because clearly, these two have many decades of self-denying angst to iron out, preferably while horizontal. But there’s something stronger than that in his head, in the air, something gorgeous and barbed, and somehow, it makes a lot more sense this one time to do as he’s told.

He’s still three steps away when they grab him, metal fingers and flesh, and then he’s jammed up against Cap, their arms around him like safety bars and all he can think for a second is _you must be this tall to ride this ride_. He laughs for no good goddamn reason and both of them grin at him like they’re tigers and he’s a cheetah rubbed in catnip and hell, this crap day whose previous highlight was kicking Dr. Doom’s ass just got so much fun.

Steve cups his face, breathes into it, sends a thumb over the turn of Tony’s mouth, dips it in. He tastes like Ivory Soap and dark roast, like fidelity and apple pie, and he hisses when Tony gives him the smallest hint of a suck.

“Tony,” Steve says like it’s the answer to a prayer and then he’s got the full Steve Rogers experience: the heat of his tongue and the drag of his lips and the brush of that soul-crushing beard, the only facial hair that’s ever made Tony give it up in his sleep, rocking into the sheets imagining the burn of it between his thighs and this kiss is not that but oh shit, it’s so much better.

Because there’s Barnes, too, pressed up against his side, indestructible fingers gently stroking the back of his neck, holding his head up as Steve’s mouth grows more ferocious, more needy.

“Please,” Bucky says in his ear. “Stark, c’mon, please.”

Tony doesn’t think, doesn’t have to, no, just tears away from Steve’s kiss and dives straight into Bucky’s. Bucky, who’s hard and flush against him; Bucky, who’s somehow lost his shirt and tugs away Tony’s--there might be ripping involved, lost buttons, but who the fuck cares; Bucky, who leans them back against Steve’s chest so his Redwood of a body is all that’s keeping them from tumbling over.

Steve spears his hands through their hair, holds them close. “Fuck,” he says, in a voice that would take down a mountain, “look at you two. You’re so pretty.”

He leans down and licks into their kiss and they make room for him, sigh for him, invite him in.

Time gets weird and gooey, stretches out like sparkly soft-serve, and when Tony can see clearly again they’ve got Steve pinned on his ugly living room rug, have him stretched out on those boring beige swirls, and normally, Tony would seize on any chance to mock the man’s fear of color but hell, Rogers is naked, all smooth skin and shivers so hey, Tony’ll give his shit decorating a pass.

And anyway, Bucky’s buried between Steve’s legs and Tony’s got dibs his mouth, first with his tongue and then with his cock. His knees are dug in on either side of Steve’s neck and he is gonna have a fuck ton of rug burn but it’s worth it because Christ, is Steve good at this. He’s gripping Tony’s ass like a super horny vise and he’s pouring out these happy, happy sounds like he woke up this morning wanting nothing more than to drown on Tony’s dick and all at once Tony’s right there on the edge.

“Gonna come,” he says, somehow. “Gonna--Steve, stop, I’m, it’s--”

Then Bucky’s hand is on his back, a cool brace at the base, and Steve’s fingers meet it, entwine, and Steve can’t say a fucking thing with his mouth stretched out taut but that touch, the bright light of his eyes says way, way more than enough.

He loses it, an arc light smashed to shreds, and together, they hold him still, don’t let Steve lose a drop. It’s searing, that sensation, being a tin man balanced between two giants, watching Captain America swallow, watching Steve grin around his cock and feeling Bucky brush his hole and no wonder his idiot hips jerk like he can come again, of course they do, but somehow, what the fuck: he actually _does._  

For a good 90 seconds, he doesn’t know his damn name.

Then he’s on his side, tucked next to Steve, and Steve is kissing him, wild, those big hands on Tony’s shoulders, humming to beat the damn band.

A kiss on his ankle. Another on his calf. Bucky.

“Hold him,” Bucky says. “Hold on to him tight.”

They’re still kissing when Barnes shoves inside, a long, steady arch that ends with Steve flat on his back, growling, one arm around Tony and the other racing up to meet Buck.

“Baby,” Steve says, the word thick and heady, red wine.

Bucky shakes his head and kisses the palm of Steve’s hand. “Babe,” he says. “Hey, babe.”

They don’t talk as they fuck--Tony’s pretty sure that they can’t--but it doesn’t seem like they need to.  They’re both grinning like dopes and Tony thinks he is, too; it’s hard not to, watching them move together, feeling the eager thud of Steve’s heart as he lifts his body to meet Bucky’s, watching Bucky’s face shudder and shift and sigh. Tony shoots a kiss to Steve’s cheek and reaches up to pet Bucky’s and even though there’s a lifetime between the two of them, a history Tony doesn’t yet know, they make room for him, sigh for him, invite him in, too.

When he comes, Bucky’s face freezes, sudden stone, and it’s Steve who cries out for the both of them, lets out a deep, satisfied moan, even though Tony can see that Rogers’ cock is still hard, red and leaking, and that just cannot fucking stand. Well, it can, which is exactly the point.

He pets at Steve’s hair, dark with sweat, and Steve leans into the touch, takes one kiss, then another, and Tony knows when Bucky leaves him because Steve clutches at Tony, his mouth pulling tight.

 _It’s ok_ , Tony wants to say, _I’ve got you._ But the words won’t come out; they’re trapped in his throat, coiled behind desire, yes, but behind something else, too: this crushing bloom of emotion that spikes when he watches them touch, when Bucky drags ass up enough to nuzzle Steve’s temple and then lean his own there, his eyes closed, his breath still ragged and fast.

They lay there, a tangle, and Tony doesn’t suck Steve’s cock like he wants to, like the man fucking deserves. He doesn’t run his fingers through the mess Bucky left or bite at the soft inside of Steve’s thighs. Instead, he leans his cheek against Steve’s and curls close to his body because he doesn’t want to let go, is the thing, doesn’t want to drift any farther away than he has to from the two of them, from the way they’ve started breathing in time. Like this, with his head on Steve’s shoulder, he can watch them smile at each other, watch them smile at him, and still slip a hand over Steve’s ribs, around his hip, and get a hold of the heat of him--hard as an anvil, twice as thick--and stroke him slow, learn the feel of him and when Steve starts to whine, he can watch Bucky kiss him, his tongue the same tempo as Tony’s hand, stroking Steve slow, learning the feel of him.

When he lets go, it’s all heat, spunk everywhere, messy, and Steve thrashes between them, makes all kind of beautiful noise and he is everything, everything, that Tony’s ever hoped. 

He closes his eyes while they’re kissing, he and Steve, he and Bucky, and when he pries them open again, apparently, he’s been asleep.

There’s a blanket over him, for one thing, and his head is turned onto Steve’s chest and Steve, the fucker, is snoring like a bull moose in heat.

“Sorry,” Barnes says, somewhere off to his right. “He’s always done that. Snored. You should’ve heard him when he was tiny. He was twice as loud then, I swear.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Try sleeping with that in the same room.”

Tony cranes his neck, sees Barnes slung in an armchair, half-dressed and looking a hell of a lot more like himself.  That’s something. He sits up a little, ducks out from under Steve’s bear trap of an arm and tucks the blanket back around him. It’s only when he stands up that he remembers that he’s naked, only a split second after that when he remembers that Bucky’s already seen him this way, so blushing about it is pointless and dumb. Still, he envies Barnes his pants. 

“You, ah,” he says, flailing for something reasonable to say, “you’re ok now? No more howler monkey?”

“Nope. It’s all me.”

“What the hell happened to you?”

Bucky shakes his head and tosses something at him--his boxers. “The same thing that happened to all of us, I guess. Just in a greater quantity.” He points at the pink horned statue that’s come to rest by the window. “Courtesy of that fucking thing. I should never have touched it. I don’t remember really wanting to; I think it kind of made me."

Tony wriggles into his boxers, careful not to stomp on Steve. “Please don’t tell me it’s some kind of magic. I fucking hate magic.”

Bucky lifts up his shoulders. “All I can tell you is that I saw it, moved past it, got snapped back like a bow. Like something was pulling my strings. And next thing I know, it’s in my pack and then we’re back here and I couldn’t wait to show Steve the damn thing.”

“But he didn’t touch it, right?”

“No way.”

“So how’d he get so slap happy?”

Barnes grins, a little wary. “Same way you did: through me.”

“Yeah,” Tony says vehement. “It’s magic. Motherfucker. I should call Thor to come smite it. Or his mystical answering service. Why the fuck won’t he get a smartphone?”

He’s babbling, he knows it, but he feels ridiculous: standing in his underwear in front of a guy old enough to be his grandpa who’s in love/lust with the same man that haunts Tony’s (very nice) dreams with his knees Brilloed to shreds and Captain America’s spunk on his hands and he needs a shower and a scotch, not in that order, stat.

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky says. “In a minute. Why don’t you come over here for a second first, huh?”

Twice in one day, Tony does as he’s told. Yeah, it’s definitely magic.

“Look,” Bucky says, once Tony’s settled on the side of the chair, “this was strange day, ok, but I gotta say, I think it was good for us.”

That kicks up Tony’s eyebrow. He’s got a million retorts, only half of which involve the words “sexed-up assignation,” but he decides to pitch one straight down the plate: “Why?”

Bucky gives him a face. “How long have you been carrying a torch for Steve? Five years?”

“More like seven. And you?”

“That I remember? Like 30.”

“And yet you’d never said anything.”

“Nope,” Bucky says. “And neither had you.”

There’s a heat at the back of Tony’s neck. Not a good one. “So are you saying we should be happy because for one afternoon, we both got what we wanted thanks to some magical doodad? That makes me real fucking uncomfortable, Barnes.”

Bucky looks away, his jaw tensing, relaxing, like he’s chewing over his words. “What I’m saying is that for whatever reason, that thing let us show Steve how we felt, something that neither one of us had managed to do on our own.” He glances back, his eyes shy now, almost shuttered. “And it may have been fucked up, how we got there, but when we were together just now, the three of us, it felt real. Like there was something other than some chaotic juju at work.” His hand finds Tony’s thigh and squeezes. “Maybe that was just me, though.”

Tony wants to believe that, oh shit, yeah he does, but--but--

He slips his fingers over Bucky’s. Can’t quite look at him. “I mean, yeah,” he says. “Wasn’t just you. But that only makes two. I guess we’ll have to ask Steve.”

“Ask me what?”

They both jump because what the fuck, Steve’s sitting up, the blanket pouring over his hips, his face bright, his eyes smiling.

“Hey,” he says, “guys. Ask me what?”

Tony holds out a hand, beckons, because it’s way easier than talking. Steve stands up without hesitation, bare assed and unashamed, and wanders over, strings Tony’s fingers through his own.

“What--?” Steve starts, but Tony cuts him off with a kiss. A serious one. Just to see. And Steve, he doesn’t pull back or say _what the hell_ : he just hums like a happy clam and gives it right back.

“Seriously,” Steve says when Tony lets him go, “fellas, what’s the--?”

Bucky licks away that one, all the rest of Steve’s words, and that’s it. All the answer they need.

“I don’t know about you,” Steve says when they let him breathe again, “but I’m starving.” 

“Cool,” Tony says, “I’ve gotta call a god about a totem, but why don’t you guys order pizza? And Rogers, before you answer the door, you might want to put on some pants.”

“Shhhh,” Bucky says, “don’t listen to him, babe. You’ll be the best tip he gets all day.”

Steve gives them both a look. “Enough with the shtick. Haven’t we had enough yukking it up for one day?”

“Eh,” Tony says with a grin. “I think we’d both be up for round two.”

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt:  
> \- We didn't do anything wrong, we didn’t break any laws.  
> \- Oh no.  
> \- WHAT did you do?  
> \- Nothing! It’s just that the laws keep changing. It’s getting very challenging to keep up. Did you know, for instance, that it is now illegal to give a perm to a possum?  
> 2) truth serum  
> Prompts from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).


End file.
